


Gold Standard

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Best, Ego, Friendship, Gen, Honor, Mercy - Freeform, Perfectionism, Practice Duels, Pride, Strength, Weakness, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 20:25:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14701566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Alex confronts proof that he isn't the best.





	Gold Standard

Gold Standard

The first fingers of dawn were pointing through the windows as Alex hastened down palace corridor to the courtyard where he and Duke Gareth always fenced at hours in the morning sensible people reserved for slumber. It was, he knew, an honor to train privately with the duke—to have a man with a list of duties a league long invest time and effort into teaching him sword work—but that didn’t make it pleasant to awaken every day before the birds chirped greetings to the rising sun. 

That was why—after a late night studying until his eyes bled with a contraband candle that would have earned him a week of extra lessons if a sharp-eyed servant had noticed its glow in the crack beneath his door—he had slept later than usual this morning and dressed in a disorderly rush. 

As he raced down the hallway, not wanting to provoke Duke Gareth’s withering disapproval for being tardy, he tucked his sword into his scabbard. In doing so, he spotted that his tunic was in disarray to rival the court drunkard’s, Sir Myles. 

He tugged at his tunic to straighten it because something about Duke Gareth’s exacting manner made Alex never want to appear less than perfect before him. With a scowl, he realized that this tidying tunic endeavor was doomed to futility. Quickly he rumpled his tunic again so that it would see as if he intended to look slovenly rather than as if he had tried and failed to appear otherwise—because the first offense was negligence while the second was failure, and failure was the worst crime to admit to when pursuing knighthood—before he stepped out into the courtyard where Duke Gareth awaited him, an impatient hand resting over his sword hilt. 

Duke Gareth didn’t acknowledge Alex’s sloppy tunic or his surliness, though Alex was certain that the duke’s piercing gaze that missed nothing had detected both lapses, adding them to an invisible tally of Alex’s transgressions that he must have stored in his head, even if he elected not to comment upon them at the present. 

“That statue was commissioned during the reign of King Jonathan the First.” Duke Gareth nodded at a marble statue of a conquering general on a horse surrounded by scaffolding. Since the duke’s hand continued to hover over his sword, Alex kept a wary palm over his own, wondering if his training master was attempting to distract him before launching an assault. “It cost the taxes of twenty large villages for three years to build it and almost as much to repair it. Did you know that, Alex?” 

“No, Your Grace.” Alex had devoted none of his life to exploring the economics of statue building. Still, the sums fascinated him as mathematics always did. Performing rapid calculations in his head, he decided that constructing the statue in the first place had been an expensive extravagance and that knocking it down would be much cheaper than hiring the craftsmen to repair it. He hoped that the current Jonathan would display more astute money management when he was crowned than his ancestor had…

Before Alex could offer to save the realm valuable coin by dismantling the statue, his focus was captured by the movement of a shadow behind a stone pillar on his left. A heartbeat later, a tall figure leaped around the pillar toward him. 

Alex barely had time to retreat and slip his sword out of its sheath to deflect a stinging blow aimed at his forearm. 

“Missed you by a hair.” Gary, the duke’s son and Alex’s closest friend in a world where nobody could be trusted and it risked a stab in the back to allow anyone too near, grinned as he saluted Alex with a flourish of his sword. 

Baffled and unable to conceal his surprise though Duke Gareth had told him on so many occasions that a swordsman with a face that could be read like a scroll was a swordsman living on borrowed time, Alex chanced a querying glance over his shoulder at an impassive Duke Gareth. 

“Do you expect an attacker to announce himself with a trumpeter?” Duke Gareth arched an eyebrow, and Alex bit back a curse. He had predicted a surprise attack from the wrong Naxen apparently, but he had sense one was imminent and should have been more on guard against it, not that he needed his training master to double his shame by pointing out the abundantly obvious. 

Gary surged forward again. Alex somersaulted backward and then twisted to assail Gary from the left, slicing off the hem of Gary’s tunic. 

“Got my clothes but not me.” Gary’s eyes gleamed with mischief as he lurched away from Alex. 

Gary might have been having fun—life was one laugh after another to him—but Alex was serious about sword work, and he was determined to recover his pride after this assault upon it. Resolutely he emptied his mind of his shock at Gary’s utterly unanticipated attack and concentrated on establishing what he thought of as his battle focus. His attention widened to encompass everything in the courtyard while simultaneously and without contradiction narrowing to center on Gary alone. 

Everything he knew about Gary organized itself in his brain and became information he could wield against his best friend in this duel. Gary was a giant compared to Alex, and thus he had the advantage in size and strength but not agility or speed. Gary never played a game he didn’t believe he could win with shrewdness. Gary took after his father in that he preferred to dictate the rhythm of any battle. 

Alex decided that he wouldn’t permit Gary to do that, and he danced forward to unsettle his friend. He attacked aggressively and then seemed to stumble over a pebble to lure Gary into a perilous opening. When Gary seized the bait, Alex landed a blow on Gary’s broad shoulder. 

Normally an instructor watching a fight would award points when blows were struck with the winning blow being to the neck, but Duke Gareth didn’t, yet Alex knew he was staring at them though he tried not to dwell on that fact. Still he could feel the hairs on the nape of his neck shivering as he sensed Duke Gareth circling them, observing their technique from every angle. 

With cunning sweeps of his sword, Alex drove Gary steadily backward until Gary jumped onto the scaffolding and swung at Alex from overhead. It was a daring use of the terrain, and Alex hadn’t expected it. He dodged a smack from Gary’s sword that would have landed with enough force to make him see stars until sunset. Slashing up at Gary, he urged Gary to drop from the scaffolding and land behind him. 

Perfect, Alex thought as he whirled about to rain a flurry of strikes against Gary’s sword. To ward off the storm of attacks, Gary had to slide his foot back. When he did so, it slipped against a patch of grass slick with silver morning dew. Gary’s sword wobbled as he struggled to regain his faltering balance. 

It was time for Alex to glide in with the killing blow, the strike to the neck. All he had to do was move forward an inch and lightly touch Gary’s neck with his weapon, but he hated to win the duel on a flash of clumsiness on his friend’s part even if he had engineered it. He would embarrass Gary in front of his father, and Alex couldn’t bring himself to do that. It felt too much like a betrayal to humiliate his friend for his own glory. 

Instead he hesitated for a fraction of a second that was long enough for Gary to regather his footing. Then they fought on until the rising sun was golden in the sky, and they were both drenched with sweat when Duke Gareth shouted a halt. “Let’s call it a draw, boys!” 

Alex returned his sword to its scabbard as Gary mirrored the motion. He was satisfied with his performance. His best friend brought out the strengths in him both on and off the practice court. 

“You may go, Gary.” Duke Gareth waved a palm at his son in dismissal. “Thank you. Your participation was most educational.” 

Gary bowed to his father and smiled, bright as the sun breaking across the sky, at Alex. “Invigorating duel. See you at breakfast, Alex.” 

For a moment after Gary left the courtyard, and Duke Gareth didn’t speak while Alex stood, breathing heavily, as he awaited his training master’s stern critique. He knew a handful of places where he could have fought better. Duke Gareth wouldn’t tell him anything that would astound him. 

“I called it a draw, but you lost”— Duke Gareth’s lips were at their most deadly thinness—“and you lost in the worst way.” 

“Pardon?” Alex’s forehead furrowed. 

“If you want to become great, you must fight without ego.” Duke Gareth’s hand—forever short a finger—beat a tattoo against his sword hilt. “You plainly haven’t learned this.” 

“Without ego, Your Grace?” Alex frowned because it had been Gary’s pride he had been most concerned about in the end, not his own. “But”—

“No buts,” interrupted Duke Gareth brusquely. “Today you went easy on Gary to try to protect him. You imagine that you did so as a mark friendship when you truly did it to boost your own ego.” 

“Boost my own ego?” Alex could not have been more astonished if the Old Ones had been reborn to reclaim the Eastern Lands. 

“Alex, this lesson will go faster if you don’t repeat everything I say like a Carthaki parrot.” Duke Gareth crossed his arms. “Yes, your own ego. You think you’re a better warrior than your friends, and that you need to go easy on them to save them shame. That is a key to your own weaknesses, not theirs.” 

“Friendship is a weakness, Your Grace?” Alex tried and probably failed to hide how much the duke’s incisive remark had cut him to the core like a knife peeling the skin from an autumn apple. 

“Ego is a weakness. Friendship isn’t.” Duke Gareth’s sigh echoed in Alex’s ears as an eerie reminder, taunting him with the knowledge that he wasn’t the best. He was only learning from the best, and no matter how hard he worked, he would never be perfect or even good enough in the eyes of the best. Next to the gold standard, he was as gaudy and false as fool’s gold. “This lesson is over. Whether you learn from it is your decision. Run along to breakfast.” 

Before Alex could bow, Duke Gareth had pivoted on his heel, hurrying off to attend to meetings to determine the fate of the realm, and Alex was once again relegated to the bottom of the training master’s priority list.


End file.
